Collective excitations (spin waves) of long-lived atomic hyperfine states can be synthesized into a Bose-Hubbard model in momentum space. We explore many-body ground states and dynamics of a two-leg momentum-space lattice formed by two coupled hyperfine states. Essential ingredients of this setting are a staggered artificial magnetic field engineered by lasers that couple the spin wave states and a state-dependent long-range interaction, which is induced by laser dressing a hyperfine state to a Rydberg state. The Rydberg dressed two-body interaction gives rise to a state-dependent blockade in momentum space and can amplify staggered flux-induced antichiral edge currents in the many-body ground state in the presence of magnetic flux. When the Rydberg dressing is applied to both hyperfine states, exotic sliding insulating and superfluid (supersolid) phases emerge. Because of the Rydberg dressed long-range interaction, spin waves slide along a leg of the momentum-space lattice without costing energy. Our study paves a route to the quantum simulation of topological phases and exotic dynamics with interacting spin waves of atomic hyperfine states in momentum-space lattice.
Advances in experiments on dilute ultracold atomic gases have given us access to highly tunable quantum systems. In particular, there have been substantial improvements in achieving different kinds of interaction between atoms. As a result, utracold atomic gases oer an ideal platform to simulate many-body phenomena in condensed matter physics, and engineer other novel phenomena that are a result of the exotic interactions produced between atoms. In this dissertation, I present a series of studies that explore the physics of dilute ultracold atomic gases in different settings. In each setting, I explore a different form of the inter-particle interaction. Motivated by experiments which induce artificial spin-orbit coupling for cold fermions, I explore this system in my first project. In this project, I propose a method to perform universal quantum computation using the excitations of interacting spin-orbit coupled fermions, in which effective p-wave interactions lead to the formation of a topological superfluid. Motivated by experiments which explore the physics of exotic interactions between atoms trapped inside optical cavities, I explore this system in a second project. I calculate the phase diagram of lattice bosons trapped in an optical cavity, where the cavity modes mediates effective global range checkerboard interactions between the atoms. I compare this phase diagram with one that was recently measured experimentally. In two other projects, I explore quantum simulation of condensed matter phenomena due to spin-dependent interactions between particles. I propose a method to produce tunable spin-dependent interactions between atoms, using an optical Feshbach resonance. In one project, I use these spin-dependent interactions in an ultracold Bose-Fermi system, and propose a method to produce the Kondo model. I propose an experiment to directly observe the Kondo effect in this system. In another project, I propose using lattice bosons with a large hyperfine spin, which have Feshbach-induced spin-dependent interactions, to produce a quantum dimer model. I propose an experiment to detect the ground state in this system. In a final project, I develop tools to simulate the dynamics of fermionic superfluids in which fermions interact via a short-range interaction.
Ultracold atoms are used to study various fundamental physics, including many-body system, nonequilibrium dynamics, and find many applications in quantum computing and quantum sensing. In this thesis, we studied the dynamics of ultracold atom gases with controllable two-body interactions. One of the major concerns is to manipulate the atomic states with electromagnetic fields. Here, we will show four projects associated with this topic. The first project is about the Sagnac interferometer based on trapped Bose-Einstein condensate. We explored the dynamics of the atoms and their relation to the sensitivity. We came up with an optimised driving field, and the performance is examined with interactions taken into consideration. The second project is about the quantum dynamics of bosonic atoms in an optical lattice with long-range interactions by Rydberg-dressing. It has been widely studied due to its controllable strength, length and anisotropy, which paves the new approach to engineering exotic quantum states and improving the performance of quantum devices. We found that phase transitions of Mott-insulator, superfluid supersolid, and density wave during a quench process. The correlation of the atoms is studied which reveals the properties of long-range interactions. The third project shows new designs of the magneto-optical trap for atom cooling. They are proposed to be manufactured by 3D printing technology. We simulated their performance and optimised the geometric parameters. The time-response and impedance have also been analysed. The fourth project studies the ground state of Rydberg-dressed fermions from the perspective of Fermi surface deformation. We calculated the deformation manifested by the aspect ratio and the appearance of Cooper pairs. The power-law scaling relations have been found with respect to the laser field, atom density and the quantum number of Rydberg states.